You know what? I'll take that as an opportunity to segue into my favourite music circle, WAVE and their member Morrigan. They started out experimenting with orchestral and electronic styles, but are best known for their orchestral arranges, at least to me. Let's start off with the original Border of Life and then bring around Wave's choral version. Maybe something a bit more imperious is to your taste? Sure, let's start out with a base of Hiroari Shoots A Strange Bird 'Til When?, and then add in some Morrigan/Wave and stir until you end up with Ancient Sword. Finally, their ultimate track(s) in my opinion, both variants on Judgement of Sixty Years: first is Guilty or not Guilty, which has a focus on wind instruments, and next is T, 1948,12 Yama of Xanadu with its choral emphasis. But why settle for just one, when you can have both in this mashup of the previous two versions?

And I'd of course be extremely remiss in not posting at least a few arranges of my avatar, the ice fairy Cirno. Starting off with her theme, Beloved Tomboyish Girl, we move onto a jazzy version from the fighting game Hisoutensoku, then follow that fast pace up with Sound Sepher's trance take. Next thing we do is turn things up a notch with Tutti Sound's arrange, Tutti Sound being another group I must expand on later. Now, let's recharge your batteries with both Virus key's waltz and Liverne's absolutely beautiful take on the plucky nature spirit. Finally, we finish things off with what must be objectively the best Touhou arrange ever. Nope, this is not up for debate, pipe down Namtab. We can debate all we want on who's the best Touhou, but when it comes to musical arrangements this cannot brook any debate

Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth is objectively the best Touhou comic.

Karaagetarou's stuff is good, Gensokomuten's stuff is good, Bomber Grape's stuff is good, Imizu's stuff is good (don't read Magnum Koishi ever unless you like chicks with dicks), Warugaki's trip reports are good, Tag Dream is good but has racy outfits, Futa492's stuff is good (avoid anything that's X Shopkeeper and the one where Marisa and her SA shot types get drunk and talk about how they want to get hosed by Rinnosuke), jiroo is cool but depressing, the Omito series is cool and Good Day! Myouren Temple is cool but has dirty jokes.

Oh goddamn you guys rule. I'm listening to all the songs CommissarMega posted while reading Forbidden Scrollery. All I can see is danmaku! I'm probably gonna start puking bullets by the end of the night.

I'm getting better at IN. I managed to get to Eirin's very last spellcard with just one bomb left... sadly it was not enough. I had to quit because after that I started making stupid mistakes in the early stages.

The sad thing is, I would have had this down hours ago if I let myself use five lives instead of just three. But drat, when I finally make it, I'm gonna be so drat proud.

I'm getting better at IN. I managed to get to Eirin's very last spellcard with just one bomb left... sadly it was not enough. I had to quit because after that I started making stupid mistakes in the early stages.

I'm assuming you mean her second-to-last since her actual final one lets you fail.

The key to beating Astrological Entombing is to focus on destroying the familiars. Once you take down the majority of them the spell becomes much less of a mess, and in fact it's one of the (vanishingly few) times Magic Team is straight up the best option.

As a general thing, anything from Bear's Walking Path, Bomber Grape, FLIPFLOPs, Strange Chameleon, Happy Flame Time, Ennui Akadako (if you like game jokes), or Saku Saku Tei will be a nice, fun read. Akatsuki Dou and STRIPE PATTERN are decent choices if you like your Touhous grim, and Yakumi Sarai's works are a decent blend between the two (though if you ask me, most of his endings are kind of flat). And if you're fine with AU, gensoukoumuten does excellent work (unless you're a diehard fan of Marisa anyways ).

Hey guys, just a reminder, a couple pages ago someone got probated for linking to danbooru, with :nsfw: tags and everything. You might wanna cool it with the links or rehost those comics or whatever, Zorak doesn't take too kindly to people linking to a site pretty much dedicated to peddling cartoon porn.

You know what the best/worst thing about the Touhou fandom is? The fact that there's so much of it out in the open. Sure, a lot of is is terrible and/or porn, but there's also way too much good stuff. For example, there's a torrent out there of all the Touhou music remixes and such.

It's 2 TB in size. No, you read that right, two terabytes. Even if you follow the Sturgeon's Law maxim that 90% of stuff is rubbish, that still leaves around 200 GB of good music.

Hell, look at the post I made- most of it's orchestral and rock/metal, and even then it's because that's the stuff that interests me personally. I barely touched stuff like techno, regional music (e.g. Irish/Spanish folk) or joke music. It's the great thing about the fandom, odds are you'll find something you'll definitely like, but it's depressing because you'll never be able to say to yourself "Welp, I've finally gone through all the good stuff". It's a heady feeling

Hey guys, just a reminder, a couple pages ago someone got probated for linking to danbooru, with :nsfw: tags and everything. You might wanna cool it with the links or rehost those comics or whatever, Zorak doesn't take too kindly to people linking to a site pretty much dedicated to peddling cartoon porn.

Wasn't that because the comic itself was not worksafe? Just put on AdBlock (link for Firefox add-on, link for Chrome extension) and you won't see anything, or at least I don't.

CommissarMega fucked around with this message at Aug 20, 2013 around 04:37

You know what the best/worst thing about the Touhou fandom is? The fact that there's so much of it out in the open. Sure, a lot of is is terrible and/or porn, but there's also way too much good stuff. For example, there's a torrent out there of all the Touhou music remixes and such.

It's 2 TB in size. No, you read that right, two terabytes. Even if you follow the Sturgeon's Law maxim that 90% of stuff is rubbish, that still leaves around 200 GB of good music.

Hell, look at the post I made- most of it's orchestral and rock/metal, and even then it's because that's the stuff that interests me personally. I barely touched stuff like techno, regional music (e.g. Irish/Spanish folk) or joke music. It's the great thing about the fandom, odds are you'll find something you'll definitely like, but it's depressing because you'll never be able to say to yourself "Welp, I've finally gone through all the good stuff". It's a heady feeling

I feel this is the perfect time to mention that, after taking a break from Touhou music for a buncha months and instead going through my sizable backlog of indie game/whatever albums that I've had pile up from Humble Bundles and poo poo, I've begun going through the Touhou stuff again. So expect another collection soon!

Oh goddamn you guys rule. I'm listening to all the songs CommissarMega posted while reading Forbidden Scrollery. All I can see is danmaku! I'm probably gonna start puking bullets by the end of the night.

I'm getting better at IN. I managed to get to Eirin's very last spellcard with just one bomb left... sadly it was not enough. I had to quit because after that I started making stupid mistakes in the early stages.

The sad thing is, I would have had this down hours ago if I let myself use five lives instead of just three. But drat, when I finally make it, I'm gonna be so drat proud.

I feel this is the perfect time to mention that, after taking a break from Touhou music for a buncha months and instead going through my sizable backlog of indie game/whatever albums that I've had pile up from Humble Bundles and poo poo, I've begun going through the Touhou stuff again. So expect another collection soon!

I'm assuming you mean her second-to-last since her actual final one lets you fail.

The key to beating Astrological Entombing is to focus on destroying the familiars. Once you take down the majority of them the spell becomes much less of a mess, and in fact it's one of the (vanishingly few) times Magic Team is straight up the best option.

Oh gently caress. Thank you! I never once dropped out of focus during that stage, so that's probably my main downfall. Next time I'll look out for it and take out those familiars.

Dang, you guys are killing me with all this goodness. I'm just gonna have to quit my job!

quote:

Might I direct you to my Touhou music collection torrent(in progress)?

For everyone who enjoys Bomber Grape's comics, here's something similar I found. Acknowledge Her, Crown Prince!, In which Miko tries to adopt Kokoro, and discovers Tenchi was not a biopic. Standard Danbooru warnings apply.

The key to beating Astrological Entombing is to focus on destroying the familiars. Once you take down the majority of them the spell becomes much less of a mess, and in fact it's one of the (vanishingly few) times Magic Team is straight up the best option.

I kind of just assumed all of the final boss familiars were nigh-invulnerable, I guess, because this never occurred to me. That's gonna make that fight a hell of a lot easier.

Re: music chat: I really wish there were more arranges of DDC music. I've pretty much only been able to find one arrange each of Illusionary Shamisen Recital/Reverse Ideology/Little Princess, and they're okay, but not great. I do enjoy this guy's Reverse Ideology piano arrange, though!

Hashtag Yoloswag fucked around with this message at Aug 20, 2013 around 09:22

Second track is probably some actual rapper rapping in English about Muhammad Ali(as opposed to recorded for this track), set to, I believe, a slowed-down version of Night Falls ~ Evening Star, and subtly mixed so that he repeats stuff nearly seamlessly.

It rules. And isn't on Youtube. But it's way better than I expected coming into this single album of twelve tracks by random people I don't recognize except Oiko. At the rate I'm going I might have the collection ready as early as tonight or tomorrow.

edit: this is not ironic love for this track, it really rules, I started unconsciously nodding my head to it. I was not expecting that in a Touhou music collection, but I suppose with a quarter terabyte of stuff to go through it's going to have a little of everything!

Captain Invictus fucked around with this message at Aug 21, 2013 around 01:40

Although I have heard some complaints that TD and DDC's soundtracks aren't "Touhou-ish" and to a certain extent I can see that. It really depends on how you define Touhou-ish I guess.

Some peoples' exposure to Touhou music seems to be limited to EoSD through MoF, where most of the tracks are either grand-scale orchestras playing out on cheesy, upbeat synth to sound at once comical and bombastic, or are just flat-out sugar rushes. For an example of the former, see Gensokyo Millenium. For perhaps the ultimate embodiment of the latter, see Native Faith, which is positively bouncing off the walls.

As of SA, ZUN's been experimenting. It shows, and it's really a good thing, because he's talented enough to do well outside of the comfort zones he'd established...even though he isn't stepping that far out. Examples of tracks that I found "unexpected", when I first listened through, included Interdimensional Voyage, Nuclear Fusion, Green-Eyed Jealousy, Wonderful Cemetery, and (utterly blowing it all out of the water) Pristine Beat.

Oh, and UFO Romance. The only Touhou track to use sampled giggling, and is just an utter delight in every way.

edit: And also Lonesome Werewolf, not because it was unusual, but for the "Why does a stage 3 boss have EX boss-sounding music " factor.

I'm not sure why anyone would object to any of this. You can't expect an artist not to want to expand on what they do sooner or later.

And also Lonesome Werewolf, not because it was unusual, but for the "Why does a stage 3 boss have EX boss-sounding music " factor.

I have to admit, I didn't really like Lonesome Werewolf for somewhat that reason- it's not that it sounds like it should be an EX-Boss's theme, but that it sounds so much like the themes of previous EX-Bosses. It's like Heian Alien and UN Owen were slapped higgeldy-piggeldy right next to each other, and it didn't sound nice at all. It's really odd- out of a soundtrack that includes sterling tracks like Pristine Beat and Little Princess*, we suddenly have this mashup.

*Seriously, the best overall song in DDC if you ask me; Pristine Beat has the amazing drum solo, but not even that can beat the sheer baddassery inherent in Little Princess. THERE'S a theme that should fit an EX-Boss fight.

EDIT: Just listening to it again, and now I'm freaking praying Tutti Sound or Iron Attack get their hands on this- or better yet, Morrigan. There's just something about this song that demands either face-melting metal solos or Latin choirs at full blast

CommissarMega fucked around with this message at Aug 21, 2013 around 08:22

Personally, I'm hoping that Lily-an comes along to sing us a heartfelt ballad about the trials and tribulations of having your head not attached, or how great it is to flip poo poo upside-down.

By God, I actually think you're onto something- no seriously. I'm imagining Dullahan Under The Willows as a slow rock ballad, or something jazzy and it really does work. Just take a listen to the original- it's light on the 'guitar', and I can definitely see (well, hear) a saxophone taking its place, though I must admit I can't really tell whether some smooth jazz guitar work would be better. Maybe both, but that might make it too busy for a slow number.

Dammit, now I'm in the mood for some Touhou jazz/lounge music. I hope you're happy

I'm not sure why anyone would object to any of this. You can't expect an artist not to want to expand on what they do sooner or later.

Thing is, ZUN's almost entirely self-taught, so (as I see it) it's very hard for him to change his style after all these years, considering that he only knows how to write a very specific kind of music. I applaud him for trying to experiment and add a bit more rhythmic work, different instruments, that sort of thing, but I wonder exactly how far he can take it.

Of course, the outsider art thing is also what makes his music interesting, because he happens to be good at the weird micro-genre of poppy orchestral midi-anthems that he writes. That, to me, is what makes his music more interesting than arrange stuff which just slots his melodies into already established genres.

A self-taught artist can certainly change their methods, even totally reinvent themselves if they so desire. It might be more difficult without any formal training in musical theory and structure, but you never know what kind of crazy thing can pop into someone's imagination.

By God, I actually think you're onto something- no seriously. I'm imagining Dullahan Under The Willows as a slow rock ballad, or something jazzy and it really does work. Just take a listen to the original- it's light on the 'guitar', and I can definitely see (well, hear) a saxophone taking its place, though I must admit I can't really tell whether some smooth jazz guitar work would be better. Maybe both, but that might make it too busy for a slow number.

Kaztora seems really good at working in subtle bits of instrumentation, like the guitar riffs in their cover of Interdimensional Voyage...and also at doing something unexpected. Honestly, I'm utterly stoked as well to see where the dojin musicians go with all of this.

Little Princess and Pristine Beat are certainly stand-outs, but I'm personally hoping for a lot of different takes on Reverse Ideology. I don't expect anything specific, but it's got that energetic yet menacing cadence that artists can either play way up, or turn around into something slower or more relaxed.

Last I checked Marisa was #3. Or in other words #1 because it's not even fair to the other characters to include Reimu/Eiki on a ranking list.

Marisa's strengths lie in the fact that her gimmick is lasers shooting upwards from the bottom, and her lvl 3 attack further limits the amount of space one has to move around in. Her lvl 4 is a joke though.

She's not the worst choice one can make, but she's far from being the best non-reimu/eiki character. She's much better in a longer lasting match, when limiting the space someone has to move in is more effective.